I have finally reached the end, at least for me!! I feel like I have made a good dent in some of my extras, but sho’ haven’t gotten rid of it all!! Pssshhh I’m not that good!! At least I was able to use up a good bit of my little “things” that have added up and taken up the most room. Used up a good bit of bottle caps (will be using more since my mom has now asked for one too, hehe), put my leftover kitchen tile to good use, even made great use of those shutters that have been sitting in the garage!! Needless to say, I am pretty pleased that I was able to use them up, even with some of the hiccups, still pleased.

Now onto my next cluster of overflow….major overflow….WINE BOTTLES!!! This is only a small smidge of ’em, geez, trust me, I have plenty!!!! Ssshhh….don’t judge hehe!! Momma has to have her grape juice too.

Last year I was able to put a good bit of them to use making a “rain chain” for a front corner of our house where we have a good bit of water run off. Has worked pretty well so far, but I still have some cosmetic work to do for the curb appeal. If you haven’t seen it, click here to check out Wine Bottle Rain Chain…actually rebar but let’s not get into semantics .

Even after making the rain chain, I still have plenty of bottles (and still have them coming). So now I have to put more of these bad boys to use!!

The simplest one I have done so far was making one into a bracelet rack for my bangles. I have a wooden box that my husband gave me years ago that held all of them, until now. I have gathered enough that the box will not close shut anymore…bummer. So why not use one of the wine bottles to hold’ em for me (thanks for the inspiration mom)!!

A little top heavy

Fill with Pea Gravel

I used this particular bottle since the label matches our bedroom décor so well, and well, ya know….this is one of mine and Jeff’s favorite ones!! Since it was a little top heavy from all the bracelets, I filled about a third of the bottle with some pea gravel that we have to keep it from getting tipped over (by me or other little fingers). If you don’t have pea gravel laying around, there is no point in buying the 50lb bag of it just to do this, you can easily get a small bag of rocks that will be more than plenty from the dollar store. Phew, that is it….hehe….now I need a break. Just kidding!

This next one involved a little more effort on our part….mostly Jeff this time since he handled the drilling of the glass. But this time…I wanted to make something for us to enjoy while we are outside cooking out or just enjoying the night.

One thing I love about living in the country, the pretty fireflies that flutter around in the dark nights. They are so mesmerizing!! I could watch them for hours!! Since I can not catch them and keep them forever, I am just going to make my version…..

Honestly, there wasn’t much to this project either. Drilling in the glass was the hardest part really. Again, I decided on two of my fav bottles for this project. All I needed were my bottles, a drill (with drill bits specifically for drilling into glass), cork, mod podge, and battery powered LED lights.

I wanted the lights to be inserted through the bottom so the control box can be hidden and I won’t have stray wire hanging out all over the place. This was actually fairly easy, but nerve-racking. When you drill into glass, you can not rush it!! You need to let the drill bit go at its own pace making sure to use very light pressure to help push it along. You will also want to keep the bit and glass lubricated to help you avoid breaking the glass or damaging the bit….can ya tell we missed that step…Jeff?! But in the end, it took about 15-20 minutes to cut holes in the bottom of these two bottles.

Drill hole in the bottom for the wire to be hidden.

Drill bits specifically for glass cutting

Oopsy….no biggie

Now that the holes are drilled…it’s time to get these suckers wired up!! Before I forget to tell ya…to protect the labels a bit from the elements, I brushed on a fair amount of my mod podge (click here to check that out)over the label. Actually dried up pretty “clean”. Now that I got that out of the way, back to getting wired. I went to Target and found these battery operated strings of LED lights. They were perfect…only 25 lights, control box is fairly small, and is able to be mounted easily to stay out of site. Plus they were pretty inexpensive…$5.99 per box. All I needed to do now was feed them through the bottom until it came out of the mouth of the bottle. Once I had the end of the wire at the top, I just made a small hook shape just to help me keep it in place while I inserted the cork. And … Tada! One word of advise, be sure to use a cork that has recently been removed from a bottle and hasn’t begun to expand yet. Otherwise, you will have a VERY hard time trying to insert a cork that has expanded. Now that my cork is in place, I continued to feed the wire into the bottle until all the lights were inside of the bottle. They will jumble and cluster pretty good on their own, but if you want to make adjustments, a pencil or chopstick (in my case) will fit easily inside to help nudge them in place. Yay….now just to repeat on the next bottle!!

LED Lights from Target 5.99/box

Feed through the hole on the bottom..

Slightly took the wire to hold in place…

Now cork it 🙂

Ohh I’m lovin’ it!!! To give it a little something extra, I purchased some cheap wine glasses from the dollar store to display with the bottles. But then one afternoon, we happened to be out and about when Jeff spotted citronella tea lights at the hardware store!! ***insert excited shreak here*** PERFECT!!! I can put those in my wine glasses. Can never have too much citronella around here…lowdy!!! Used a little bit more of the pea gravel from outide to hold the tealights in place…bam!! Instant cuteness! !!

Here we go!!!! Oh …. I couldn’t wait for it to get dark!! Lets light up the night!!!

Ooohhh

Aaaahhh

So warm and welcoming!!!

Oh, I just love this!! What makes this great is that it is perfect for indoors and outdoors. Great way to brighten up and dark corner with a soft glow. Also perfect for an inexpensive and quick gift idea (Mother’s Day is around the corner people)!!!

We hope that you saw something here today to help you during your own crafting & life adventures. We encourage our readers to share their own projects in the comments as we absolutely LOVE seeing what others were inspired to create. We also kindly ask that comments be polite or constructive.